1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc, and more particularly, to an information recording medium, a recording/reproducing apparatus and method, an initialization method, and a reinitialization method, by which a disc is initialized to secure recording/reproduction compatibility.
2. Description of the Related Art
The standards for optical systems including optical disc drive systems and optical discs have to be frequently updated in light of the developments of optical disc technology and semiconductor technology. FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining problems related to standard updating. Generally, a new standard is obtained by adding new functions to an old standard. An old standard disc 12 is designed to operate in an old standard drive system 11, whereas a new standard disc 14 is designed to operate in a new standard drive system 13.
The old standard and the new standard may or may not provide recording/reproducing compatibility. If the recording/reproducing compatibility is assured, the old standard disc 12 and the new standard disc 14 can be recorded/reproduced in both of the old and new standard drive systems 11 and 13. For example, when the new standard disc 14 is loaded into the old standard drive system 11, the old standard drive system 11 should properly operate in response to newly added functions in the new standard. Therefore, the standard should be designed by considering the necessity of updating them continuously.
In view of this need, it is necessary to define rules that allow a drive system to perform functions recognized by a current standard and rules that allow the same drive system to perform new functions not recognized by the current standard. In a case where a future standard is made by adding a new function to a current standard, if a future standard drive system stores on a disc information regarding operations that a current standard drive system needs to perform for the new function, the current standard drive system can read the information from the disc adapted to the new function and perform the operations for the new function.
In such aspect, a method of initializing or reinitializing a disc to enable various types of drive systems to use a disc adapted to a function that is not recognizable by the drive systems desired. Initialization is a process performed on an empty disc to initially use the empty disc. Reinitialization is a process performed on a used disc to initialize the used disc again.